


Reluctance

by gehlien



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, just implied tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gehlien/pseuds/gehlien
Summary: “You hesitated.”“I never hesitate.”“Oh, don’t you?” The smile on his face was as gentle as his entire demeanour. Kenny was envious of it.





	Reluctance

**Author's Note:**

> a short fic to celebrate those two old men finally getting animated! thank you Isayama for the beauty that is chapter 69

Kenny emerged from the shadows when he made sure Rod Reiss left the hall; the sound of his footsteps became barely audible. He knew the prick wouldn’t allow this visit. He had already done a lot to cut short the time they spent together, so Kenny was forced to turn to deceit. 

Uri was sitting by the fireplace. He was flicking through his book and the noise of turning pages matched the crackling of fire.

“What is it, Rod?” he asked when the door opened. 

“Sup, king.”

“Ah, Kenny.” Uri leaned out of his chair to face him, his expression unflinching. 

“Ya don’t seem happy to see me.”

“It’s the opposite, actually,” he admitted. “How have you been?”

“Fine. You?”

“Busy.”

“Busy rambling about love and peace?”

“Exactly.” Uri nodded, smiling faintly.

“Sannes must be delighted.”

Kenny looked around the room; nothing ever changed there - still the same neatly made bed, a pile of books, and no other traces of human activity. As if a ghost lived here. Uri even resembled one. If Kenny hadn’t been grabbed by his huge arm a few years ago, he wouldn’t believe that a man of posture this scrawny and frail was the strongest person in the world.

“Don’t ya ever have any guests?” he asked, grabbing a chair and sitting on it next to Uri. The wood creaked under his weight. 

Uri blinked at him, taken aback. He readjusted his robe around his shoulders in one graceful motion. 

“What do you mean?”

“Rod invites women over all the time. Or rather seduces them. Why don’tcha?”

Uri considered him for a moment, then smiled at the fire. It turned his fair hair ginger, and Kenny subconsciously decided he liked it.

“Does he?”

“Well, there is Alma and... Uh.” Some more probably, but it didn’t interest him enough to investigate.

“I like doing things my way. Not my brother’s way.” As if that answered Kenny’s question. “I’m not looking for a wife.”

Kenny doubted any woman would want to marry a giant beast. But a king? That’s a different story. 

“What about you?” Uri caught him off guard. “Being my bodyguard doesn’t stop you from having a family.”

Kenny opened his mouth to answer, but the images of Kuchel’s corpse and Levi’s starving face were still vivid in his memory. Even after all those years. Uri was also a distraction on his own, just of another kind. 

“I’m unfit to be a parent,” he said eventually. Self-hatred was always the answer.

“You hesitated.”

“I never hesitate.”

“Oh, don’t you?” The smile on his face was as gentle as his entire demeanour. Kenny was envious of it. 

He hated that he remembered what Uri was referring to. The day of their meeting. The day he wanted to shoot him but didn’t, and offered himself instead. 

“Beats me,” he sighed finally. 

“Is that why you came here? To discuss our romantic lives?”

“Of course not.”

Kenny didn’t have to think twice before torturing or killing people for him. For a man who’d only even known violence, it was the proper way to show affection. If Uri ordered something, Kenny would do it.

But he wouldn’t dare touch him. Just the thought of caressing Uri’s face, embracing his untainted body sent shivers down his spine. His blood-stained hands didn’t even deserve to brush the skin of someone this immaculate.

Kenny wasn’t oblivious to the crimes he’d committed. He could only feign this much empathy, and he used it up years ago. He became numb. 

Or so he thought. Uri’s eyes followed him very thoroughly, with lids half-closed, as if expecting him to do something. But Kenny already knew that no matter how much eagerness the other man showed him, he wouldn’t make a move, because in the end he was still a subject to his own self-loathing. 

‘Look at ya,’ he thought, ‘denying yourself the best thing that’s ever happened to you.’

Knowing that nothing would come out of it, Uri finally relented and kept staring at the fire with that weird expression of his that disclosed nothing at all about what he was feeling. He would get depressed sometimes, unresponsive, and the air around him would become melancholic, as if he was bleeding despair instead of blood. But it wasn’t the issue that day, Kenny was sure.

“What are ya reading?” He nodded at the book still sitting on Uri’s lap.

“It’s a story Frieda lent me.”

“Frieda? That little runt?”

Uri smiled. “Yes. Rod’s daughter.”

“I know who she is.” Kenny nodded at the book again. “What’s it about?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have a chance to start.” He shot him an accusing glance. 

“Tch.” 

Uri sat so that the light shone on the worn out pages, making it easier to decipher words.

“Read me some?” Kenny asked in a nonchalant manner, without making it sound like a request, and Uri complied. 

Just staying by his side was enough.


End file.
